Saudade
by 6cbrilhante
Summary: It began as hurt, and it hurt as hell. Then it became some kind of pain, a very strange pain that mixed love, nostalgia, sadness, hope and a lot more things they couldn't put their fingers on. It became the puzzle of their lives.


**A/N: **_**Saudade**_** is a Galician-Portuguese word that translates a nostalgic feeling in a very deep and meaningful way, somehow as the longing for something/somebody that is gone, maybe even for good. There is probably no word in all of the world's languages that can translate **_**saudade **_**in all its meaning, and it's also very hard to explain its meaning; even for Portuguese people like me, it is technically impossible to wholly define it. But I have chosen this title for some reasons: first, because in "Fidelity" and "Whatever It Takes" House makes it clear that he speaks Portuguese, which means that there is a chance that he knows this word; and second, because that's how I define how House has been since Lisa's departure: how most of us feel about LE's participation, about all those Huddy scenes which made our day when we watched them in an all-new episode, about Cuddy "sitting around PPTH on her bureaucratic ass" and, last but not least, that's the feeling House and Cuddy now have for each other. Because love (or in House and Cuddy's case loBe) is one of the most important parts of **_**saudade**_** (just like pain, suffering, etc, are) and I even dare to say that **_**saudade**_** is love at its highest levels. (If you want to try to understand what it means, listen to a Fado song: you may not understand the lyrics, but just the sound of it gives you a pretty good idea. And Amália Rodrigues has very good songs. I recommend it, but you are free not to. I wrote this fic while listening to "Tudo Isto É Fado". And my heart is breaking in tiny pieces.)**

_Saudade_

It began as hurt: she had lied to him, he had hurt her, she tried to hate him, he tried to get over her, but they couldn't, and it hurt as hell. Then it became some kind of pain, a very strange pain that mixed love, nostalgia, sadness, hope and a lot more things they couldn't put their fingers on. They got apart: she ran away, he went to jail. And there was no morning they wouldn't wake up having that pain in their hearts, no night they wouldn't fall asleep sinking in that very same feeling. And every single day they lived without each other it only increased. They tried to bury it away, they tried not to show that weakness to everybody that was around them, but that weakness was nothing but strength, it was what allowed them to put one foot in front of the other and not to die in the middle of every step they took.

It was their misery, and it was their happiness. Two contradictory emotions whose paths had crossed in that mysterious pain that had filled their souls the moment they knew their history was over. Though it couldn't be over, there was no way it was. Because if they were over for good, then this pain would have never existed in the first place. But it kept running in their veins at all the moments; it was just like heartbeat: most of the times they wouldn't remember it existed, but it was always there, and it sustained their lives.

They never got used to that pain: it was always something new, weird and unwelcome. It took years for them to realize that was now what defined their own beings, and even if they knew their paths would most likely never cross again, somehow they knew that they were bonded forever by that pain that carried an aura of mystery. There were moments when they were lying at night, surrounded by darkness and separated for miles and miles of distance, and they silently longed for each other: sometimes they would cry, sometimes they would look at the other side of the bed and imagine those long gone days and nights the other one would be there, and sometimes they would just stare in the blank, feeling. The mysterious pain became some kind of secret and quiet prayer for some God that was up there listening so that their full happiness would be back and that weird type of love they learned to have for each other got clarified and fulfilled.

They started looking for some word in the dictionaries that were their hearts for a word that could explain _the _pain, but they soon understood that it wasn't enough. Then they started looking in paper dictionaries. Not yearning, longing or nostalgia, or else it would be way too much simple. It also couldn't be platonic love, because it was not platonic: there was some kind of desire, attraction and passion somewhere in that pain, although those were as strange as the pain itself. They spent many sleepless nights looking for something that would show it in all its meaningful truth. But there was no word that they could remember.

They kept trying. It became the puzzle of their lives, the reason why they were alive. It was the secret of life itself, and they somehow knew that once they found the word, they would have the map of the way that would lead them back to each other. The search became more and more intense, and they were desperate to get that key, the key to the vault that was keeping their spirits, hearts and souls imprisoned. The key to the mystery that mixed love, hope, passion, sadness, hope, tears, prayers, life, pain and so many other things together.

That was the search they quietly promised, to each other and to themselves, they would do until they got re-united. It didn't matter whether it was in life, in death or in both. The only thing that mattered was to find their way back to each other.

They never remembered that, somewhere in the other side of the Atlantic, there was a people that knew that word.

Saudade.

**I know it was short, and there were so many things left to say that I didn't know if it even deserved an ending. As always, reviews are love!**


End file.
